Joining The Horde

I’ve been playing World of Warcraft on and off for a year now but in that time I’ve never played a Horde character. My preferred race has always been the Draenei (gypsies from outer space – what’s not to like?) and I feel like I’ve got quite a strong affinity with the Alliance. My friends all play Alliance and my main can help gear my alts which makes leveling up that bit easier. Of course, I’m a terrible altaholic and keep getting distracted and rolling new characters. This has always been my vice in MMORPGs but in WoW I’ve found it particularly painful because after running through the mid level content completely twice, I now find going through it incredibly dull.

Aside from my main character, I’ve got another who’s level 52 and then a few more who are in their mid 20s or low 30s. Level 30 seems to my Achilles Heel and by the time I hit it with a new alt, I just get utterly fed up with doing the same quests over and over again. To me, this is the big drawback with WoW. It’s so driven by quest content that by the time you’ve done it all a couple of times, the replay value is dead and buried. Of course this is one of the reasons that I’m really looking forward to Cataclysm as I think a content refresh, for all levels, will do the game wonders.

Until then I’m thinking of rolling a Horde character and trying out the opposite side for a while. Not that I particularly care about playing them for any roleplaying or game reason, I just want to experience some new content and new quests. Plus, if I can always purchase a handy faction change at a later date and switch back to Alliance once I’m done with the grind. Nothing’s permanent now after all.

Still, the downside is that I won’t get to chat to my Alliance friends when I’m leveling up. I never understood why that divide existed. Unless my lore is wrong, aren’t the Alliance and Horde meant to be teaming up to take on the Scourge anyway?

Welcome to the Horde. Much the same as the Alliance, there are things I love about it and things I hate.

I still don’t understand the whole not being able to communicate thing either. I could understand it at some points, such as pre-BC areas where your storyline essentially tells you that you’re still at war, but that all gets changed as you go along. Just one more thing we have to deal with for the time being, I guess.

I’ve got alts galore myself. Personally, I don’t have any high level Alliance because all the races bore the crap out of me. Yes, even the Draenei. Original main was a Tauren, but when BC came out, all my friends rolled BE on a new server so I joined them. They all quit the game but my wife still players hers. I think we need to transfer servers so I can play my Tauren again…although I do like my BE Hunter.

The language barrier has nothing to do with lore. Whenever major lore characters on opposite factions interact, they have no problems understanding each other. It was implemented because gankers were harassing their victims via whispers long after the gank itself.

I think the root of all Warcraft lore is the very first Warcraft RTS, and that was “Orcs vs. Humans”. The whole “lets work together to beat the Scourge” stuff came way later. This is more visible on a PvP server, where you can attack members of the other faction, but never members of your faction.

Playing a character from the other faction is a good idea, because you’ll be able to experience new zones and quests. The “classic” Horde experience is making an orc or troll, and leveling up through Durotar and then the Barrens. Alliance doesn’t have anything remotely equivalent to the Barrens, although some people would say that is a good thing. Of course the infamous Barrens chat is gone now, but it is still something worth seeing before the Cataclysm strikes.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to some new content. I enjoy leveling up and the journey from 1 to 80 and it will be more fun when I’m not doing quests I’ve done several times before. Plus it’s my last chance to experience it all before everything changes!

I wholeheartedly support playing the opposite side in a way to see new and interesting content. Mine unfortunately has to be done on another server since I have far too many alliance toons on Durotan.

The language barrier as previously mentioned is primarly there for PvP reasons. Between ganking, city raids, and random dribble that gobbles up trade chat it is easy to see why the 2 should be kept seperate.

As far as fighting the scourge goes… yes and no. Horde and Alliance are both fighting the scourge but it is by no means together. Infact in icecrown there was a battle going on between alliance and the scourge. The horde came in and attacked the alliance and the scouge overtook both forces. Not to mention there are a ton of pvp related quests including shooting down enemy messengers and a goofy king of the hill vehicle quest.

You can also attack horde bombers from the alliance bombers while doing those quests in icecrown. Not to mention that one of the boss fights in icecrown will involve an epic battle between 2 of the air gunships.

i love gnomes! and dwarfs (not as much as gnomes though) however what i did wanted to do is to be able to explore the characteristics of the whole game. so i went to another server and picked out one class and one race for each so i get to see how the horde feels i made

now what i found out about the difference between the horde and alliance is the people in chat are deffinatly different i found horde more mature not to mention for some reason when i was leveling people actually when they saw me invited me to there group to level wich i think it was cool cause alliance never did that. Alliance I find is more like making jokes and talking about funny stuff in chat i hate the chuck norris jokes and the spammmmmmmmmmm buttons on chat with alliance however allot of the low level allliance is very friendly in a kiddyish sort of way

so i basically fell in love with both factions and i think the differences between the factions makes the whole game more interesting

what i love for blizz to do is to allow us to play any class with any race and for us to be able to have 20 characters per server cause 10 characters is not enough for me especially since there adding goblins and worgen to the mix i want my new alts to be on the same server as my mains for the help with gold and stuff and to show my friends. and not to mention give us more haircuts to do cause i found it tough to make when it comes to horde give the character the look i wanted without one orce or tauren look like the next one.

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Who am I?

Gordon was born on the mean-streets of suburban Holland and learned to fist fight without remorse in steel cage matches at an early age. He now lives in Edinburgh with his wife and their imaginary Nigerian bodyguard, Mr Itunu.